10:00 Lynda's U3A Middle English group has its monthly meeting on Friday afternoon on zoom, and she's emailed members with what we're doing this time - an extract from William Langland's Piers Plowman, written c. 1370-1390. To each member Lynda has assigned a passage that we have to read aloud with (approximate haha) Middle English pronunciation, before translating it into Modern English.
I look at my bit. Piers Plowman is an earnest work that praises manual work and honest men, and castigates the sinful and the lazy. Langland is also quite hard on the clergy and is good at highlighting their shortcomings - the work is sometimes regarded as a precursor to the 16th century Reformation, which swept away the Catholic Church and all the monks, friars, nuns and monasteries with it.
I've never been into monks or 'enlightenment studies', but it used to be big business in Langland's time, no doubt about that. People used to spend a lifetime learning to be enlightened, but I think nowadays we've become a bit more sophisticated, and we can absorb enlightenment and quickly inject it in the 'mix' of all our attitudes, without having to spend too much time on it, which is nice! Witness this recent story from Onion News, the influential American news website:
SEATTLE—While watching a dharma talk recorded at the Ancient Mountain Zen Center, local 32-year-old Mark Davis told reporters Tuesday that he felt like he pretty much got the gist of enlightenment after the first few minutes of hearing a Zen monk speak.
“Yeah, yeah, you let go of attachments, dissolve your ego, and then you get enlightened—why is he still going on about this?” said Davis, noting that he understood the nuts and bolts of “the whole nirvana thing” within the monk’s initial few sentences, and everything after that about selfhood and thusness just seemed like repeating the obvious.
“Basically, identity is an illusion and accepting that lets you awaken to reality. Check. Did he really have to take 45 minutes talking about this? Maybe I’ll just skip to the end and see if he has anything different to say.” Sources confirmed that—at that moment—Davis became enlightened.
Certainly the whole thing seems to be a lot simpler when viewed from the modern standpoint, that's for sure!
But putting all talk of "monking" aside, today my main interest is in the words Langland uses. And as always there are plenty of interesting old words for me to get my teeth into.
Piers Plowman has no time for people who don't do honest work. As a ploughman his job is to provide food for the local community. And in the passage Lynda has assigned to me, Piers singles out some people he's determined he's not going to supply food to, certain local residents that he doesn't approve of :
Jack the juggler · and Janet of the stews,
Daniel the dicer · and Denot the bawd,
All lying friars · and folk of their order,
And Robin the ribald · for his smutty words --
(Harvard translation)
Obviously no god-fearing ploughman would be enthusiastic about providing food for people like these good-for-nothings, although to refuse to serve such people would probably be an offence today - oh dear!
So how does Piers's blacklist stand up today?
Jack the Juggler - there aren't many of these jugglers around in our neighbourhood, as far as I know, and juggling has become more of a hobby than a profession, I suspect. But it's hard to be sure! I would say on balance though that being a juggler today probably carries less of a stigma nowadays, compared to the 14th century. And I would personally feel quite surprised if a supermarket, say, refused to serve somebody just because they were rumoured to indulge in juggling from time to time.
Janet of the stews - she may not have been really called Janet. 'Janet of the stews' was a common expression in those times for any prostitute. A 'stew' was originally a bath-house, but came to mean a brothel because bath-houses had that kind of reputation in those days - oh dear! A 'stew' only became a meal of stewed meat with vegetables in the 18th century, and people could at last use the word without causing offence or embarrassed giggles.
Daniel the dicer would probably be doing his gambling online today.
Denot was a "bawd" - ie a lewd person: in the 14th century this word could be used of both men and women. I don't think there are many bawds living near Lois and me, but it's hard to be sure - they don't exactly have it embroidered on the backs of their jackets now do they!
Robin the Ribald would have been a bit of a bawd certainly, and he would have compounded this by using some smutty words - I think we all know people like that!
15:00 After a nap in bed Lois and I drive over to Bishops Cleeve to give the car a run and also get some cash out of the TSB cash machine: we last had to get cash out about 4 months ago, so this is quite an adventure. We get the maximum (£200), and this should last us for another 4 months hopefully.
We rarely use cash these days. Ian the window-cleaner asks for cash (£11), and Lois always puts £10 in with any birthday cards she sends to her great-nieces in Oxford. And that's about it.
17:00 Bob our neighbour brought us round a brace of partridges last night, so Lois has a look online for a suitable recipe: she finds one of the BBC Food website, courtesy of the BBC's Theo Randall. It looks promising, but we'll have to see. I notice nobody has "rated" it yet, according to Randall, which must be disappointing for him. But watch this space!
Poor Randall !!!!!! And he looks so enthusiastic, bless him !!!!
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